What is a Serverless Database?

Just like a serverless model, a serverless database is a database that separates complex concerns like infrastructure, data management, data backup, security, and the architecture from the user. Here, the only thing that the user is concerned with is the data. If we go back in time, traditional databases were widely used by businesses. In this type of database, the businesses used to set up their own database server, manage other hardware resources, configure and optimize the database management system, etc. Although this provided high control and flexibility to the users, it demanded a lot of continuous management from the teams. Fast forward to the present, and we now have the concept of a serverless database that is managed by the cloud service provider and not the user itself.

Examples of a Serverless Database include:

• SQL serverless database: CockroachDB Serverless, Amazon Aurora Serverless, PlanetScaleDB, etc.
• NoSQL serverless database: ScyllaDB Serverless, Google Firestore, Astra DB, etc.

Characteristics of a Serverless Database

There are certain characteristics that a database needs to comply with in order to be called “serverless.” Some of them are mentioned below:

1. Automated scalability: A serverless database automatically scales up and down as per the workload, even if it is unpredictable. For example, if there is no demand for data, the database scales down to zero. And if some demand comes, it scales up without the intervention of a developer. This is true for functions like data storage and data read/write transactions.
2. Deployment speed: Creating a database cluster on a serverless database takes a few seconds to a maximum of a few minutes, which is considerably faster than a traditional database. Moreover, there is no need to plan or configure the database.
3. Simplicity: Since serverless databases are a relatively new technology, working with them should be simple and fast. To make them simpler to work with, they provide features, such as:
   • Fully managed operations
   • REST APIs to work with the database
4. Consumption-based billing: In a serverless database, users don’t need to pay for the storage. Rather, they have to pay for the resources that they use and when they use them. This is a consumption-based billing system and it optimizes the overall cost of the database.

Technology keeps on advancing at a rapid pace, aiming to find solutions to problems and complete the work more efficiently. Problems arise in every sector, and the Department of Database Management and Deployment is no stranger. To build and deploy applications, developers needed some kind of hardware to deal with the database, whether it was the processing of it or the storage. It required a lot of operational management and hence, consumed a lot of precious time, not to mention the increase in costs of using traditional database systems.

A solution was needed, and it did arrive in the form of a serverless database. Now, the developers can create clusters in the minimum amount of time without taking over the management tasks of the database. But that is just a tiny task that a serverless database can perform. In this article, we will discuss the concept of serverless and a serverless database, its characteristics, why serverless is needed in the first place, some examples of a serverless database, and its advantages and disadvantages.